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Bandages

Obviously, a CW surgeon should have a stock of bandages. Can these bandages be made at home or is there a source they should be procured through? I hope they can be home made and packaged at home... Instructions?

I am new to Civil War reenacting (have done some frontier trapper) working on getting started as a surgeon in Gray and hopefully to be able to galvanize. I have been watching this board and it looked like a good place for info. As an old Navy HM who stayed in surgery for many years, I think the choice is a great one.

Bandages

That is a good question. The answer is as clear as mud I'm afraid. Basically it is a who, what, when, where, and why kind of situation. For instance, if your portraying Confederate at something like the siege of Atlanta where you have thousands of casualties coming in per day if not hour, you would have bandages made out of everything from bed sheets to shirts and they would often be hand rolled by ladies of a soldiers aide society or what have you. If you were somewhere else, you may have had "professionally" rolled bandages that were linen and rolled up by some aide society or sanitary commission in a rear area. I would highly recommend getting the book, Gangrene and Glory. It is all about this stuff and a very informative read. I hope this helps somewhat.

If you are talking about the common roller bandage, a good place to check is "The Hospital Stewards Manual" by Woodward. You can find it in google books. Pages 304-306 talk about sizes and how to roll them. It also gives basic instructions on how to make a bandage roller. Interestingly enough it also says that the roller bandages should be reserved for use with fractures as its length, up to 7 yards, is unwieldy especially in the field. They are relatively easy to make at home requiring only muslin, something to cut it to size and a great deal of patience. They need to be rolled tightly and a 7 yard strip of muslin can be frustrating. For a southern impression you could also use the bed sheeting or shirt material or whatever was on hand for the ladies to roll. Union surgeons would would have had access to better material.

Remember the old ace rollers? What I would give for one of them for some homework now!

Having worked with some of the old roller bandages, I have a good idea how to make them but just wanted to do some de-farbed work. I hope I never ever need to use another for real... Good stuff for emergency splinting tho.

Good thought! Begs the question, would modern dryer lint be anything like the lint used in bandaging a would? I know today we use plan gauze with or without an absorbent dressing, but almost always with some kind of non-stick dressing on a large wound. Naturally, I have seen a lot of surgery done today though an incision that had simply a band-aide placed on it.

Good thought! Begs the question, would modern dryer lint be anything like the lint used in bandaging a would? I know today we use plan gauze with or without an absorbent dressing, but almost always with some kind of non-stick dressing on a large wound. Naturally, I have seen a lot of surgery done today though an incision that had simply a band-aide placed on it.

Great article, Elaine! Thanks so much for sharing! I was wondering just what this lint is. Sounds kind of like dryer lint since it is mostly the fibers from clothing as well as the dust/shed skin caught in the clothing. At least dryer lint still has a great use as fire tender!